Bob Dylan is 70 (1)

This is a Festival review of Dont Look Back [sic] (1967)

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20 September

This is a Festival review of Dont Look Back [sic] (1967)

So, as my interlocutor suggested earlier, he was 27 at the time of the film, and I have been reminded that he is really a Zimmerman (or room-man).

One thing that he was asked was whether he was religious - he took issue with the word, and, on another occasion, didn't seem abundantly audible when he was asked if he read the Bible.

However, when the same questioner asked if those who bought his records knew what his songs were about, he stated that he knew that they did (and wanted no truck with the suggestion that he could not know, because he hadn't asked them), so no communication problems there, with words meaning different things to different people.

Remarkably also, when we are given these bogus statistics about how little (as a precise percentage) is communicated by the words that we use, shout 'Fire!' (admittedly in the right tone of voice), and then try substituting 'Conflagration!' (or vice versa)! (Equally, at the bar, no other formulation quite has the same effect as 'My round!')

Why we need books, not just the Internet : A Festival response to Dont Look Back (1967)

This is a Festival response to Dont Look Back (1967)

More views of - or at - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

20 September

This is a Festival response to Dont Look Back (1967)

Yesterday's double-bill included Dont [sic] Look Back (1967), following Bob Dylan’s pivotal UK tour in 1968 with the still relatively new handheld camera: I am left wanting to check two things, one of which any web-site will tell me (how old Dylan was then, because I’m hopeless with ages and couldn’t be sure), the other being how the film was received by those who had started following his career, which is best done by consulting a biography: there is the reassurance not only that someone has taken the trouble to research the subject, but that a publisher will have checked it for accuracy.

I shall come back to why, but first to say how beautiful Joan Baez’ voice was at that time (she is seen arriving with Dylan, and was around for the earlier part of the tour), and what a pleasure it was to see footage of the famous concerts in the Royal Albert Hall (it was not identified which songs (or parts of them) were from which). His career has lasted so long that it is refreshing to see him at this time, although it is what true fans (and I know about a few) would know all about (and have multiple takes of the audio and visuals), and to hear him trying out audiences in Manchester, Nottingham and Liverpool.

The interest in Dylan’s age and the film’s reception are linked, and I got into conversation afterwards, because I had found it quite a revelation to see three encounters : one at a hotel, when it seems that one of Dylan’s party (or his or their guests) had thrown a glass into the street, and two when he meets a science student (as he calls himself) who had wanted to meet him before a gig (and, maybe, to write about the meeting), and then with someone from Time magazine before going on at the Albert Hall.

Regarding the glass incident, it could be construed that Dylan shows concern that someone might have been hurt, but (I think twice) he ends up (when no one says who did it) declaring that he does not want it to be his responsibility, which, in all honesty, sounds more like not wanting to be sued.

I missed the opening remarks of what we see with the student, but I think that he was asking Dylan why he doesn’t like him. As things develop, and after Dylan has said that he doesn’t know him so why should he like him and asked for reasons why he should get to know him, it felt more like he has a chip on his shoulder, picking on someone with a few argumentative ploys, and moving between them, rather in the way that someone might play with hurting or threatening a victim.

I know that I am sensitive to seeing such behaviour, because I am quite capable of intellectual showing-off and trying to take someone down a peg or two, but the display of seemingly unprovoked hostility was even more clear with the person from Time. Dylan announced straightaway that he wouldn’t see anyone after the gig for an interview, and that he would be called a folk-singer: he could explain to him what a folk-singer is and why he isn’t one, but the man would just nod and not get it, and, no, he wasn’t going to bother to do so.

He said exactly what he thought of the publication, what it was, who read it, and why he didn’t need it, because he had sold out the Albert Hall twice without it. Move over, Mr Ego! Has Dylan recanted and been on the cover of Time since, one wonders, and does he still engage in verbal fisticuffs?

Early on in the tour, he employed the technique of saying that all the words in a question could mean different things to different people, so how could he answer it? That just seemed evasive, and the treatment dealt out to the two other men seemed like a good deal more of the same – but from whom was he really seeking to escape?


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Festival publications (1) - a comment (or two)

More views of - or at (or before) - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


10 September

Restraining the impulse to bring an eye trained in consistency too closely to bear, I shall just observe concerning TAKE ONE that:

* The Camera That Changed The World + Dont [sic] Look Back are on on as follows (not as stated, p.5): Monday 19 September at 3.30 p.m.

* The interview with Dimensions' director Sloane U'Ren is compelling (p. 1)

* There are other screenings than those listed of Tomboy (p. 4 - also on Friday 16 September at 12.45 p.m.) and Red State (p. 5 - also on Tuesday 20 September at 11.00 p.m.)

* Hugh Paterson's account of the 'forest screening' of Robin Hood was fun, and I look forward to making the film's acquaintance again in the Great Hall at Trinity

* Silent Running is being screened at 10.30 p.m. on Saturday 24 September (not in the morning)

* It would be good to apply 'a house style' to the presentation, outside of reviews and interviews, of dates and times


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